


Bloodstains

by Melody_Of_The_River



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Dark Betty, Dark Jughead, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-09 07:09:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12882726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melody_Of_The_River/pseuds/Melody_Of_The_River
Summary: Imagine this: The walls of the dining room adorned with shimmering silvery wallpaper glowing under the electric candelabra hung overhead the mahogany table, covered with a golden colored tablecloth with a warm Christmas-sy pattern, with matching napkins folded neatly in front of each seat and heavy cutlery arranged precisely to the last centimeter.Beautiful, isn't it?Yes, well, it would be quite beautiful... if it weren't for the two Coopers screaming and shouting at each other at the top of their  lungs. And the seventeen year old sitting there, quietly, silent tears falling from her red eyes, hands bleeding all over the beautiful table cloth, staring numbly into the flames of the fireplace. As a boy wearing a crown shaped beanie stares at her in horror.





	1. Prelude

Betty felt a sharp pain in her scalp where her hand was clutching her hair. She pulled her hand away to see a lock of her own golden hair twined between her fingers. She must have been clutching on her hair too strongly again. She was always doing that these days, pulling her hair out unintentionally, clawing at the skin of her scalp with her rough uneven nails, sometimes for hours, only to pull out her hand from her hair to discover dried skin accumulated under her nail plates, or sometimes caked blood.

Jughead had made her promise that she wouldn't dig her nails into her palms anymore, and because she valued that promise so much and the fact that he was the only one who had ever even noticed, her red half-moon scars were slowly healing. But with nothing to dig her nails into, her hands used to wander unconsciously to her arms and her legs and her scalp. It had gotten so bad that a few days ago at Pop's, working on an assignment she had to submit before Christmas, the kindly old man had come to her, put his hand on her shoulder and stopped her from scratching her scalp raw because the blood had started to stain her blonde hair and it had begun to look like it was a head wound. She couldn't go home like that. No, Alice would have had a fit. She knew exactly what she would say, _"That is no way for you to be walking around town! You look like you got shot! Go, and clean yourself up, you insolent, petulant..."_ The list would go on.

So, she had cleaned up her hair in the sink at the bathroom at Pop's and pleaded with him to not tell Jughead. Jug was so happy to see her improving. Every time they met, he'd hold her hand and look at how the scars were fading, kiss her hands and smile the most wonderful joyful smile, that she didn't have the heart to show him the cuts and scratches on her arms, legs and back, and ask him for any more help than he had already given her. She remembered how he had first seen the scars on her hand, and tears had welled up in his eyes and his voice had cracked as he said, _"Promise me. Promise me that you will **never** hurt yourself like this again."_

She just... She couldn't do that to him again.

Right now, her hands were ruthlessly clawing at the skin of her arm at the thought of the upcoming dinner party her mother was hosting for her and Jug. 

"Well, we've never been properly introduced to this Jughead fella," she had said, "You say he's your boyfriend, you say it's serious and you can't even bring him to one little dinner party with your parents?'' her mother had commented on her reluctance to introducing her boyfriend to her _picture-perfect family._

Of course, Betty knew that it would be anything but "one little dinner party," because her and her parents hadn't had a normal dinner with each other in a decade. Not even on Christmas. Betty still had mental (and physical) scars from all those violent dinners where her parents would pass snide, condescending remarks at each other until one of them got angry enough to raise their voice and then, the beautiful cozy dining room would turn into a contest about "who can say the most hurtful things" about what they did two decades ago, who they fucked in high school, what things their respective families did... each accusing the other of lying, betrayal, fraud, infidelity, and every other crime that came to their mind and taking shots at each other's characters until one of them stormed out of the house or threatened the other with divorce. But of course, they would never leave each other. They belonged together. They were both mad and psychotic and their own unique versions of "fucked up beyond all recognition". But they knew that there was absolutely no one else who could match their madness.

Of course, when Betty got older and developed her own opinions about the world and her dysfunctional family, her parents started thinking of her as a competitor. As another enemy. So, while they took shots at each other's characters and brought each other's morals into question, Betty also became fair game. Her parents would take turns bullying her, in a variety of psychological games they loved playing with each other, everywhere from emotional blackmail to threatening to shoot her and the entire family. For many years, Betty believed their hurtful comments and verbal absue but soon enough Betty learned to call them out on the bullshit. At this, they'd bring out the big guns of her being an ungrateful disappointing spoiled child. Sometimes, she thought they actually enjoyed ganging up on her more than they enjoyed shouting and screaming at each other, branding her as "crazy", "neurotic" and sometimes, when the argument got really terrible, a "whore". And that had, of course, led to a lifetime of her thinking she was not good enough and hurting herself when she didn't get the slightest thing _just right_. She was beginning to think she reveled in the pain, loved the high of silent suffering, loved to see all the different kinds of marks on her body from years of self-harm. Her suffering made her feel like she was better than everybody else. 

Anyway, she was glad her parents hadn't had dinner with her at the table in many years. Now, every year on Christmas, her father used to give her a present in the early morning and would then disappear upstate to visit "family friends" and her mother used to give her a gift at night and then they'd go south-side to visit her grandmother and aunts for dinner, where Alice would bicker about Hal's disappointments and Betty would sit beside the fire and listen to indie music from the 80's. Her favorite cousin had died of pancreatic cancer a few years back so for the past couple of years she would also silently sing a song for her in her old room and give 50 dollars out of her little allowance to the Riverdale Welfare Organization in her name, alone. 

So it was unsurprising why she would almost have a panic attack every time she thought about the dinner with Jug and her parents. She would have to fiercely protect Jughead of the emotional turmoil that came with living with the explosive combination that were her parents. And hence, she had worked tirelessly for the past two days, had forgotten to eat- twice- to make the Christmas dinner absolutely flawless so that Jug wouldn't be a witness to Alice's mean remarks or Hal's disappointed pitiful looks towards Jughead's slim appearance.

Though, she couldn't protect him from absolutely everything. She couldn't protect him from the endless stream of cruel jokes, that she knew her parents would make, about Jughead's crown shaped beanie that she loved, or the fact that he lived in a trailer and was planning to skip college to find publishers for his novel about the tragedies that befell Riverdale since Jason Blossom's murder and the hauntingly twisted nature of Riverdale's society. And that, he didn't even have to make up. 

 

 

 


	2. Cheers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of imagine this dinner scene to be played to the soundtrack of 'Carmen', the opera. I don't why but that sounds like it would really fit the scenario if this were a short film or something. So that's my musical aspiration for it.

"Could you pass me the wine bottle, please, Betty?"

"Ugh. Don't you think you've had enough, _Alice?"_

Betty could practically hear the italics in Hal's voice as he said her mother's name with a sneer of cold command. The clinking of the metal cutlery against the cold plates of food stopped. Betty looked up to see her mother look at Hal with a murderous expression before uncharacteristically breaking into a chuckle that couldn't have stated, _"we have guests over, let's be civil"_ any louder than if she had shouted it. Hal followed her with a robotic chuckle of his own before returning to his plate of mashed potatoes and turkey leg. 

Betty gritted her teeth and bit the inside of her cheek, passing the bottle to Alice and looking up nervously at Jughead to see if he had noticed the bomb that had the full potential of exploding if it hadn't been for his presence. Thankfully, he was still primarily focused on the plate in front of him. Betty let out a silent sigh of relief and averted her eyes before Jughead could pass his signature quizzical look at her. 

The dining room was exquisite. Betty had spared no effort to decorate it perfectly to the minutest detail, more so to avoid any cold remarks from her mother than from the excitement of having Jughead over for dinner for the first time. The walls were adorned with shimmering silvery paper that gleamed slightly under the soft yellow glow of the electric candelabra that hung overhead the elegant, sophisticated mahogany table, covered with a beautiful golden colored tablecloth embroidered with warm festive Christmas-sy patterns of jingle bells and green and silver flower wreaths. The cutlery and the expensive china was arranged elegantly and precisely down to the last centimeter, with napkins folded neatly beside them, in front of the seats. Alice and Hal sat on opposite sides of each other, each seated along the long end of the table, Hal seated directly in front of the fireplace, and Betty and Jughead sat opposite each other, along the short end. The Cooper family hadn't put up a Christmas tree in many years, and this year was no exception.

"So tell me, Jughead," started Hal, "what are your plans for college?"

_Oh no_ , thought Betty.

Jughead swallowed his food and wiped his mouth with the napkin, before answering, "Umm, I don't think I want to go to college."

Hal put down his knife and fork. "No? Why not?"

"Well, as you know, my financial condition is pretty much a tear-jerker anyway, my father just got out of of jail, and my mother lives in Toledo with my little sister. And she has big aspirations of becoming a scientist, so my parents are saving up to get her a formal education. "

"And your parents don't care if you get one, is that it?" interrupted Alice, "Well, I can't exactly blame your mother for wanting to steer clear of any South-side Serpents business-"

"My mother," Jughead snapped, "is a waitress in a diner in Toledo with annual income of barely 10 thousand dollars a year. Even with financial aid, my parents can't afford to send two kids to college. And I'm not someone who wants to pursue a career in science so a formal education is not as essential for me as it is for J.B."

Hal scoffed, "And what _is_ it that you do wanna do, _Jughead?"_

"I'm glad you asked," he replied. "I wanna be a writer. After high school, I'm moving to New York to find publishers for my novel."

"Wrote a novel, did you?" said Alice, with a chuckle. Is it one of those many angsty young adult high school drama novels released every year, that fade into obscurity?"

"No, actually, it's about Jason Blossom's murder."

That got their attention. Betty watched as Jughead's words wiped the smirks off of her parents' smug little faces. 

Betty doesn't remember much of the conversation that followed Jughead's "reveal" but at some point Alice accused Hal of murdering Jason Blossom and Hal accused Alice of sleeping around with the Serpents and soon, they had both stood up from their chairs and were shouting a colorful variety of insults and profanities at each other and then, when Betty had tried to calm them down, Hal had accused Betty of being a daughter of one of the many men "her whore mother" slept around with in her youth which brought tears to her eyes and feeling herself voiceless and powerless she had sat back down and - then she felt an excruciating pain in her right hand only to discover that she had broken the glass on the table and her parents had barely even noticed and were still hurling insults at each other.

She knew this would happen.

Resting her right hand flat against the soft golden tablecloth,she stared into the crackling flames in the fireplace behind her father. The bloodstains on the tablecloth, the colors, red on golden, presented an equally festive and Christmas-sy look to the table, she thought. 

She had forgotten about Jughead, hadn't even noticed his shocked, horrified looks since the circus began. Though, her head was light headed,she looked up to see that Jughead was no longer in his seat, but walking towards her with the most worried look anyone had ever given her. She imagined how unattractive she must be looking right now, somewhere between a crack addict and a domestic violence victim, her tears had spread her mascara around her eyes giving her a ghostly appearance and her hand was bleeding so much the whole corner of the tablecloth was stained red now. She noticed glass was stuck in the cuts in her palm. She brought her other hand to her head to discover it, too, was bleeding, all of a sudden. How was she bleeding in so many places? She didn't remember breaking the glass or scratching her scalp this evening. She felt a hand softly pick up her right hand, and carefully pick out the pieces of glass from her palm. She looked up to see Jughead take the handkerchief from his pocket and apply gentle pressure on her right hand to prevent more bleeding. 

"Come on, Betty, let's go," Jughead whispered softly into her ear, "You think you can stand?"

Betty nodded slightly, only partly aware of what was being said to her, her ears had blocked out the noise of the shouts and screams still coming from the far end of the table.

With one arm around his shoulder, he helped her walk up to her room, and locked the door behind him. 

She was somewhat aware of Jughead asking her where the first aid kit was, but then she must not have answered because she heard faint sounds of him rummaging through the closets in her bathroom. 

He applied alcohol to the cuts and bandaged it and caressed it, and had tended to the cuts on her scalp and then her arms and her legs, but she had kept staring ahead, beautiful tears falling from her emerald green eyes, ears still ringing with the shouting and screaming voices of her parents. Or maybe it was that they were _still_ arguing, that she was hearing. Probably the latter.

_This is over_ , she thought, _my parents have finally managed to ruin the one thing I cared about._

She looked into his eyes to expect to see the look of rejection, and of him searching through his mind to find the words to fill that beautiful goodbye she knew he was gonna write her.

He was always such a talented writer, she knew he'd find the words that would crush her but not enough to make her want to kill herself. Not yet.

But, when she looked at him, all she saw were tears welling up in his sapphire blue eyes, and him at a loss for words.

He pressed his lips to her freshly bandaged wounds and  all he could manage was,"It's gonna be okay. It'll be okay. We'll be together, it'll be okay. I won't let anyone break you, Betty Cooper." 

"Already broken."


	3. Cheryl

It was the snowiest day of the year that Cheryl Blossom decided to kill herself.

A few months ago, Cheryl couldn't even have pictured suicide, her life was perfect - a twin brother whom she loved and shared everything with, amazing friends, she was Head Cheerleader, had perfect grades; she could even forget that her parents were such psychos as long as she never shared more than two words with them.  At school, she would drown in her work, with school or cheerleading, keeping her mind off... other things. And at home, her refuge was with her twin brother, shielding her from the unforgiving wrath of Penelope and Clifford Blossom. 

But then Jason died.

He was going to come back.

He promised he would come back.

But he never did.

For two months, she called him every day, cried into his voice message, sent letters to the farm he told her he was planning to go to...until, they found his decaying body in Sweetwater River. Bullet to the head.

Life without him, was torture. The daily torment that she had to bear from her _loving_ mother was a delight in itself, but the constant fear of living under one roof with a potential murderer was... well, it was enough to make her want to kill herself.

Months of waking up and looking in the mirror, to see only the red hair and striking green eyes of her twin staring back at her, had already slowly killed her from the inside. The daily chore of breathing oxygen in... and out of the lungs she shared with her dead brother, was beginning to seem pointless now. Why keep blood pumping through the veins of her body whose soul had died the moment Papa Blossom, loving father of two, had shot the only person who meant anything to her, right between the eyes?  It was becoming too hard carrying around a hollow, shell of a body, dolled up in red cherry lipstick and short skirts, for all the world to see, while the fear of her mother had muffled her screams for help, extinguished her desire to put up a fight, until one day... she looked into the mirror and didn't recognize what she saw. She was tired of putting up this façade, it was a futile, hopeless exercise, that she no longer had the strength to keep up. What little hope she had, that escaped her brother's murder, her parents had made absolutely sure was crushed.

So the day after Clifford hanged himself from the barn ceiling, she stepped out of her house, donning the same white dress she had worn the last time she met her brother, and drove to Sweetwater River with a shovel. 


	4. Cold, Cold, Cold

She looked so beautiful, white dress, red belt, crimson hair flowing down her back, standing there with a shovel, slowly breaking the thick sheet of ice beneath her.

"Cheryl!" Archie screamed, "Cheryl, no!" 

She stopped hitting the ice with the shovel for a moment, turned around, to see a boy with hair as red as hers, a pair of terrified brown eyes staring at her in shock, his feet glued to the ice and a hand extended towards her, "Cheryl, please, step away from the crack. Don't do this." 

Her lips curled up into the softest smile he had ever seen, her lashes dripping with tears, she opened her eyes, glistening emerald green, and whispered, "There's nothing left for me here, Archie..."

"Just step back from the crack, Cheryl, I'll take you wherever you want to go, we can travel the world, you and me..."

"You don't even _know_ me, Archie!"

"But I know **this** isn't the last time I want us to meet... Please, please, just step back Cheryl... there's so much life still has to offer you, so many amazing wonderful people you haven't met. Please, just please..."

She dropped the shovel on the cold ice floor, "It's too hard!" she sobbed, "I can't- I can't do this! Anymore!" she said, in between shivers, "There's nothing left for me-"

"CHERYL!" screamed Archie, running towards her as the ice finally broke and took Cheryl with it. He remembers punching his fist into the ice over and over again, the impact breaking his skin and the ice cutting his knuckles to the bone. When the ice finally broke, he grabbed Cheryl by the arm and pulled her out of the freezing water, the blood from his fists staining her dress and her wet crimson hair like streaks of blood down her body. Out of all the times he has remembered Cheryl since, this image of her cold body on bare ice and her flowing red hair as he pressed her lips to hers for the first and only time has stuck with him, appearing over and over in his nightmares, his dreams and his fantasies.

                                                                                 .................................................................

**ONE YEAR LATER**

"I don't think you're hearing me, Archie," said Jughead, with an exasperated tone, " You. Are in love. With a **dead** girl."

They had had this conversation before, at least a dozen times. The first time had been a violent confrontation; Jughead had discovered Archie's stash of pictures of Cheryl when he was staying over at his house, when his father was in prison. Jughead was... shocked to say the least. He didn't know where he would've found so many pictures of Cheryl, at private dinners and formal events. The conclusion Jughead drew was the correct one, as uncharacteristic of Archie as it may have seemed at the time. Confronting Archie with the evidence had only made it worse.

"Were you stalking her, then? Breaking into Thornhill at night to snap all these photos?" said Jughead in an insinuating tone.

"No, Jughead, you don't understand, it wasn't like that-"

"Then what was it like, huh, Archie? Her brother died. Her father died. And on top of all that, she had a crazy red headed Jason Blossom lookalike _stalking_ her! No wonder she committed suicide-"

"I **LOVE** her, Jughead!" shouted Archie, his murderous eyes sending chills down Jughead's back, making him step back a little.

"Love her? _Love_ her?" Jughead mocked, "Archie, do you **even** hear yourself? You are talking about a **DEAD** girl in present tense! You have been stalking her for months, and now that she is _dead,"_ Jughead continued, moving forwards towards Archie, waving an accusing finger in his face, "you are obsessed with her like she was your long lost love!"

They both stood head to head now, horrified blue eyes staring at murderous brown ones.

"Who's to say you didn't drive her over to the edge?"

Jughead didn't expect the deafening punch as Archie's fist hit him square in the jaw...

Fast forward to now, a couple months later, and Jughead and Archie were still having the same argument. On Christmas day, no less. And meanwhile, Jughead was late for dinner with Betty's parents. 

Jughead Jones, the third, knew the curious case of Cheryl Blossom something like this.

The story was pretty clear actually.

Archie had been stalking Cheryl for months before she died, obsessed with the Jason Blossom murder case and everyone attached to it, and no one intrigued him more than the twin sister of the deceased, the red haired Aphrodite to his Ares. On Christmas evening, Archie had driven down to Sweetwater River because according to him, "he felt like the lake would be a very good inspiration for photography in this weather." When he had seen Cheryl, he had tried to stop her, but his efforts proved fruitless, she had already fallen into the water. When Archie had gotten her out of the water and performed CPR on her, she had woken up coughing and shivering from head to toe.

Archie carried her back to his car, parked an hour away from the shore... but she died. Of hypothermia. In his arms. 

Jughead had been trying to find a way to express the irony in that most surrealistic tale of events, but hadn't quite nailed it down yet. The official report said she was already out there in the cold for hours before Archie found her, in nothing but a white dress. She would've died of hypothermia anyway if she hadn't drowned, but the cold icy water certainly didn't help. 

Archie wasn't ever the same.  

There was no doubt in Jughead's mind that Archie loved Cheryl with all of his heart, maybe he loved the idea of her, that she represented free spirit and passion and fearlessness for him. She was his muse even now, one year after her death. But why would a passionate fearless girl like Cheryl kill herself? What could possibly be so much to finally drive her over the edge? Her parents weren't something she couldn't handle, and her brother's death was something she seemed to be taking way better than most people expected her to, sparking some rumors that Baby Sis' was the one who had finally gotten tired of her perfect twin's bullshit and had shot him in the head. Cheryl destroyed those rumors like a fucking queen, like she always did. That's what Archie loved about her. But for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why, she would take her own life?

And hence, he shifted all the blame towards himself, convincing himself that it was his own stalking and photographs that had finally driven Cheryl over the edge.

But if Jughead knew Cheryl, he knew that if she had even a whiff of someone stalking her she would've set the metaphorical dogs on him, setting up a witch hunt to take him down and have him incarcerated. It was these material shows of power that Cheryl had no problem with. She was an expert at using every possibility to solidify her own authority, not caring who she hurt in the process- Betty, Jughead, Josie, Val, Veronica. Nobody mattered for her. 

Of course, Jughead couldn't have known for sure and still found Archie's actions absolutely disgusting, but the theory seemed believably true in his opinion.

Jughead, was a writer. He could see that  in the months approaching Cheryl's tragic suicide, even though, she acted like she had everything under control, all the pillars were slowly breaking inside. First the death of her brother, the only person in this world she loved, then her parent's relentless torture and blaming Cheryl for the death of their son, and then the final nail in the coffin, her own father having shot his own son. That unfortunate series of events breaks any normal person, and Cheryl was Cheryl: broken for years and years, her roof holding up by a matchstick, her brother. Take that away, and she was like every other person, she crumpled under the weight.

But all this contemplation was for naught; his best friend was crying and bleeding on the kitchen floor as Jughead murmured calming words of assurance to him that it was gonna be alright, and that it wasn't his fault Cheryl died, and that he could **not** be in love with a dead person.

Jughead helped a crying Archie stand up on his feet, bandaged the knuckles he had punched into the wall before he had called him, crying on the phone, and took him upstairs and made him go to sleep.  

                                                                        .........................................................

People forgot sometimes that Jughead was also just a kid. Fixing other people's broken souls didn't make him less so. But it is not the nature of the narrator to tell tales of his sorrows unless asked about them. Instead, he would find himself in other people's tragedies, writing them down in his manuscript, hoping someday, someone would piece together a complete picture of who Forsythe Jones, the third, was from all the trinkets of himself he left in the many stories he wrote.

What Jughead didn't know was that he would be stitching up the wounds of two of his best friends before the night was over. 

Someday, someone might stitch his, but that was a hope to dangerous to entertain.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr @melodyoftheriver for more original content.  
> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! And please do give feedback, and suggestions!


End file.
